


exsanguination

by erzi



Category: Castlevania (Cartoon)
Genre: Blood and Gore, F/F, Mild Sexual Content, Violence, couples that torture together stay together
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-29
Updated: 2020-03-29
Packaged: 2021-02-28 21:22:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,611
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23383702
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/erzi/pseuds/erzi
Summary: "Ah," Morana says, steepling her fingers, an imitation of the churches that condemn them. She smiles beatifically at Striga. "See, Striga? Everything has a breaking point." She glows in muted orange that only torchlight can provide; and the poorness of it, the perfection of a torture, has the black of her pupils drowning out her irises.If this is how she always looks down here, Striga should have asked for her accompaniment a half-century ago.
Relationships: Morana/Striga (Castlevania)
Comments: 6
Kudos: 36





	exsanguination

The night is cold, the wind flurrying madly outside the castle, but the low timbre of Morana's voice simmers it to illusion. The nights have not been cold in Styria since Striga caught Morana's blue-rimmed eyes; became ensnared in them, as a rabbit in a trap.

Perhaps an odd comparison: Striga is no rabbit. Her attraction to Morana turns her mind to mush.

More so with Morana's eyes half-lidded, distant from across the table but not so distant Striga would miss their drowsiness nor the asymmetric upturn to her lips. They're bare, Striga notes, and it makes the color on her eyes that much more striking. Carmilla is talking about something, when isn't she, and Striga hums all the right agreements, nodding absently in the appropriate pauses, her attention pulled and pulled by Morana. Her entrails' dismemberment would feel just the same, with the nauseous tugs in no discernible pattern, the visceral unraveling of herself from an external cause, the paradoxical enjoyment–

"Striga," Carmilla says with coldness to rival the winter.

 _Shit_. Mush; her mind is mush. "Yes?" Striga levelly replies.

Carmilla's fingers drum on her armrest. She leans forward. "I don't think you're paying much attention to me."

"What makes you think that?"

"You've just agreed to torture the human who tried to break into our blood stores."

"Shit."

"Don't worry, sister," says a third voice – _hers_ , warm and smooth as just-spilled blood. "I can assist her. Striga finds little purpose in torture, so I can assist."

Striga chances a glance at Morana. Her smile is polite perfection. The total absence of her true indications is worse than if she'd thrown them over the table and disemboweled them in front of them all.

Carmilla flicks her wrist. "Well, what are you waiting for? Go on, find out why he was stupid enough to attempt robbing us. He's in the cells."

Striga's cape snaps as she whirls for the door, ordering the guards to move the prisoner to the torture chamber. They scramble ahead as Morana ambles to her side.

"If this human tried to rob vampires," Striga says, something to fill out the lofty halls besides their syncopated footsteps, "I do not think he will be easily questioned. He knew what he risked."

"Maybe." Morana's smile lifts. "But it'll make it more fun, won't it."

"Assuming we get him to squeal."

Morana brushes her hair away from her shoulder. "Everything has a breaking point, Striga."

On her own head, Striga flattens a wild lock of hair. It does nothing.

The echoes in the castle's emptiness bounce off closer to them as the ceiling shrinks and the walls near one another in the descent to the castle's lower levels. Marble gives way to stone, unweathered in their underground isolation; torchlight is constrained in what it illuminates; the cold of Styria has a tyrannical hold.

Guards open the doors to the torture chamber. They are in need of oiling – they screech like a man as they ponderously reveal, inch-by-inch, the dark of shadow and of blood that they contain. The prisoner has been chained to the wall, arms spread above him like a martyr, legs dangling uselessly. He turns his head up at the sound. His face is unbruised; the hatred in his eyes seethes like boiling water.

The doors thunder to a close. "So," she says, speaking no louder than usual, but it carries well in the cramped underground. "You are not just a trespasser, but a thief." She approaches the human.

"A thief who'd dare raise his filthy, human hand at the vampires who rule him," Morana adds, circling in from the opposite side.

A table boasts many torture weapons. Striga grabs a simple knife. Reflected torchlight glints off its sharp tip, and as she turns the knife to assess its quality, the light glides down it as if burning from within. She narrows her eyes at the human. "What," she says, "would make you do something that fucking stupid?"

The man's jaw is set; the veins in his neck jut against his skin, dilated from the elevation in his heart rate: from fear, from anger. He may vow silence, but a vampire's senses best pathetic virtue. The physical is superior to the emotional, always.

Striga steps closer to the man, aiming the knife to his eye. It grows, black and large as a new moon. "I will ask again. Why did you try to rob us?"

Some of the tension in the man abates as he opens his mouth to grit out two words: "Fuck you."

Striga snarls, knife a dustmote away from slicing the man's stomach open, when Morana's hand quick at the knife's hilt – over her own hand – stops her.

"You want to be careful, Striga," she says, soothingly. "If you make the cut too deep, it will puncture his organs, he will die, and we won't get what we want." Her hand, though much smaller than Striga's, settles comfortably with otherwise confidence. "You want to consider the depth of the cut: it must be painful, but he must yet live."

"Then how would you do it?" Striga asks, looking down at her.

Morana gives her a sideways smile. "First, you cut the epidermis," she says, guiding her to push the blade so slightly in Striga thinks they've not cut at all. The bright smell of a pinprick of blood proves differently. "This only hurts a little bit. Like an insect bite. He didn't even flinch. But next is the dermis." The knife digs in, and the man muffles a cry. "It's where the nerves are. He felt that, even if he is being"–with her free hand, she roughly grabs the man by his cheeks in mock affectation–"very admirably tough in pretending it doesn't hurt." Brusquely, she lets him go, and the man spits at her. It lands on her eyelid, closed in time. When she opens them, they hoard no fury, but the curl to her mouth does. With the corner of her shawl, she dabs the insult off.

"The thing about the dermis," she continues, "is that you have to cut well, as it's quite _deep_." At the word, she moves Striga's hand almost to burial into the man's stomach; he cannot contain the cry, and his body cannot contain his blood. "Oh. Too deep. We've hit the fat already." Red drips and yellow oozes as they remove the knife together, slowly, the man's face contorting as his severed nerves are further desecrated. Morana looks up at Striga. "Did you feel how deep the blade went?"

She had: the brief resistance of outer skin, the buttery surrender beneath it.

"Good. Repeat what we just did; the organs are just beneath, and we need those intact. Continue cutting up to his navel."

Striga twirls the knife in her hand, grime flicking off, jabbing the knife into the cut and elongating it in time to the man's scream. The blood's leaking follows a breath after. Curious, Striga carefully pokes two fingers into the wound, prying the skin open, eliciting a shriller scream from the man. "You're right," she says over his labored panting. "His guts are right there, unharmed."

Morana leans in and hums approval. "A nicely done cut." She carves a fingernail into the man's innards, pulling out a piece of his bright-red entrails from his own body. She flits her eyes to the man, squeezing the entrails of their gelatinous gore. "Do you feel like answering us now?"

"Fucking _vampires_!" he howls, thrashing his arms chained above him. In his agitation, spit flies from his mouth, blood from his wound. "You took my Elena from me!"

Striga raises an eyebrow. "Who?"

"You had my daughter kidnapped! She was– she was a _child_!" His teeth gnash. "I _know_ it was you fucking creatures, with your satanic needs–!"

Striga barks a laugh. "' _Satanic_.'"

"We rarely feed off children," Morana says. "The blood's not ripe yet. How do you know it was us?"

"She was eighteen–!"

Morana scoffs. "That's not a child. If she was a virgin, though, then yes. That was us." She crooks a finger to her chin. "But you don't expect us to know the names of our livestock, do you?"

The man's rage is incandescent. He cannot speak. He only bleeds on their floor, animal noises gathering to a growl in the back of his throat; bruises bloom under his sinking eyes, the blood loss affecting him so soon. Humans are pitifully fragile.

"He'll die if we don't patch him up," Striga tells Morana.

"Yes," she simply says, her eyes like a dare on the man's. "So he'd better keep talking."

Striga turns back to the man. "We kill our food. What good would it do to steal her corpse?"

He won't speak. His hands are clenched to white fists; his arms shake, the chains jingling.

She frowns. "Should I cut the other half of his stomach?"

"I think you should. Seems he's gotten used to what he already has." Morana touches Striga's elbow. "Make it worse."

And to please her, Striga drags the knife meticulously, prolonging the man's wail like a favorite song. In the torchlight, the blood could pass for vintage wine. It's fresh, at her own hand, and her stomach is empty. She looks away from it before acting undignified in front of Morana.

Blending into the end of the man's wail is his confession: "I was going to steal her blood back! I wasn't going to let you fucking _monsters_ have your way!"

"Ah," Morana says, steepling her fingers, an imitation of the churches that condemn them. She smiles beatifically at Striga. "See, Striga? Everything has a breaking point." She glows in muted orange that only torchlight can provide; and the poorness of it, the perfection of a torture, has the black of her pupils drowning out her irises.

If this is how she always looks down here, Striga should have asked for her accompaniment a half-century ago.

"You bitches–" the man starts, and says no more. Striga moves, a blur to the human's inferior eyes, fist whooshing up to break the underside of his jaw. Bones crunch satisfyingly; she hears bits of teeth come undone, rattling inside the man's mouth.

"Now he insults our womanhood!" Striga says, waving the knife accusingly at the man's battered face. "He _wants_ to die."

Morana laughs, warmer than the fires in the chamber. "We've got what we wanted. We can grant him his wish."

This Striga can do blind.

She studies the man. "You called us 'monsters' for feeding on you. But do you think anything of the pigs and cows you slaughter for food?" she asks, running a finger down the flat of the knife.

The man spits at her feet: spots of blood and a tooth, clattering out of view.

She sighs. "You were supposed to say 'no.'"

"Fuck... you," the man manages to rasp.

"You think nothing of it," Striga says, ignoring him, "because they are animals, and you need to eat. As do we." She slits the man's throat without glancing to ensure the arc is right, because of course it is. Blood showers down – over the man, on the floor, on her – and she turns around, her blade to her side.

Morana stood far enough away to be untouched by the blood. She watches it fall with widened eyes, not widened from surprise – this is Striga, the warrior – but from want.

Striga peers down at her knife. Raises it horizontal to her mouth. The swift motion makes Morana's eyes dart to her.

Good.

Striga walks toward Morana, one foot slowly after the other, knife flat, eyes on hers. The torches along the torture chamber's walls are richer than stars where they glitter in Morana's eyes, widening further with... each... step.

The only thing between them is the knife. Offered now: silently, reverently, like a Christian's chalice of wine, but far more faithful. This _is_ blood.

Morana tilts her head at such an angle the blade will not cut her. The little of her throat exposed under her ruffled collar strikes through Striga's lungs. She parts her lips, incisors gleaming, lengthening – without her meaning to? – and presses the tip of her tongue to the blade's flat base. Tortuously, languidly, she slides her tongue down the knife, red on pink, silver steel regained. Never does she stray her gaze from Striga's, who returns it with every last feverish bit of awareness at the ploy in her eyes. Her hand tightens on the knife's hilt, and then Morana has reached its tip. Here, she would draw her own blood should she drink from the knife carelessly. She has paused.

And smears the last of blood away from it with her finger, now in her puckered mouth. She keeps like that a moment too long; no small amount of blood would take so long to be drunk.

The little spit Striga had left to her is swallowed.

With a wet _pop_ , Morana removes her finger, mouth curling to contentment. "It was no virgin's blood, but it did me well." Her nail delicately prods the knife back to Striga. "Thank you, Striga."

She clears her throat, places the knife on the table. "Yes. You're welcome." She darts her eyes to the man, the gory smile she'd granted him. It has seeped out most of his blood, pooled to clotting on him, under him. She can't give Morana more.

Well, not from this man.

"Morana," Striga says, thoughtless in wrapping a hand around her wrist – engulfing it, really, but there is no brute force in it. Light as snow her hand goes around Morana's slender wrist. "Morana, let me feed you another human. Somebody better."

Morana's laugh is quiet, drunk by the stones that surround them, but not with as much greed as Striga's ears, pointing higher to glean every last of its sound waves. She gently flips her hand in Striga's hold, fitting her thin fingers between Striga's. "I would love that."

Striga brings their twined hands to her lips, sealing a kiss for a promise on Morana's hand. "A virgin," she mumbles to her skin. "I will bring her to you myself and drain the blood from her as you watch. And if that man"–she points her head in the corpse's direction–"has another young daughter, I will hunt her down to Hell itself so she can be the virgin I offer you."

Morana lets out a flutter of an exhale through her parted mouth.

The torchlight quivers, letting Striga see a spot of blood remaining on Morana's mouth. Striga raises her free hand. Thumbs Morana's bottom lip, lingering before removing her thumb, hand going gentle on Morana's cheek, and she leans in to run her tongue over her bloody lip. The iron in it is dull, its age sour, but on Morana – perfumed by spices, by the flowery bottled waters she finds vice in – the taste is exquisite.

There is no more to wipe away. Still Striga runs her tongue over it again; still Morana lets her – and with her fingers tightening on Morana's hand, with the urgent press of her lips to Striga's, it bleeds into a kiss. Teeth and nails sharp, not to draw blood but pleasure; Morana ushered back to a wall's rough stone patchwork, rusted with old viscera, and it does not stir in Striga as much as a reminder of her hunger for it. Not with Morana pliant in her hands, softness so stark with her usual polish, her clothes rippling loose, the hand now guiding Striga inside her.

The cries that sway with the crackle of burning wood are nothing of pain.

**Author's Note:**

> i love my sexy evil vampire lesbians and am already queuing up to join their human farm


End file.
